Editorial Commentary: There Are Limited Changes In Gait Biomechanics After Femoroacetabular Impingement Surgery: A Call for More Comprehensive Functional Testing.

Abstract

Biomechanical studies have reported that patients with femoroacetabular impingement syndrome (FAIS) exhibit altered walking patterns compared with control patients. The underlying mechanisms of these observed kinematic differences in FAIS patients are believed to be maladaptive and multifactorial in nature. Although arthroscopic hip techniques, surgical indications, and long-term postoperative outcomes for FAIS continue to rapidly evolve, the influence of surgical intervention on restoration of abnormal gait patterns in FAIS patients remains understudied. Recent biomechanical studies using 3-dimensional in vivo gait analysis techniques have reported minimal differences between presurgical and postsurgical gait in patients undergoing hip arthroscopy for the treatment of FAIS. The lack of postoperative gait improvement may be because normal gait rarely produces the ranges of motion that would result in impingement or may result from soft-tissue changes and/or gait alterations that are not improved with the treatment of FAIS alone. Motion analysis of FAIS patients performing more physically demanding tasks that are more likely to result in impingement, such as jumping, squatting, running, and/or landing, can potentially highlight differences that may not be identified from analyzing normal gait kinematics. In addition, longer follow-up time, stratification of outcomes based on sex, FAIS type (cam vs pincer vs combined), and the influence of microinstability are important considerations for future biomechanical investigation.